(Click thumbnail to view) SLATE
Once more, let's repeat: NEWSWEEK did a standard vetting of the Qu'ran in the Thundermug story. They ran it past SouthCom and their "unnamed source". While another item was removed based on a suggestion the unnamed source had become unsure about it, the magazine received NO indication that the small item regarding the Muslim holy book was less than solid.
We're still waiting for McClellan and the truth-before-all crowd for whom he works to answer two questions: Newsweek's sourcing problems aside, did U.S. interrogators in fact flush a Quran down the toilet? And is the deadly rioting in Afghanistan really the direct result of a short item in an American magazine? ... there have been numerous past reports - including from the New York Times, Washington Post, UK Guardian, and the Center for Consitutional Rights - of desecration of the Quran by U.S. interrogators at Gitmo ... the error (no small one) retracted by Newsweek, hinges on Pentagon acknowledgment of abuse - NOT whether such abuses have been taking place ... More than a year later, nobody striding through Washington's halls of power has been held accountable for the systematic practices of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison ...
FAIR & BALANCED? OR CONTROLLED MEDIA?
... The radical right-wingers (are) obsessed with control using the government to intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle-class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq's oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove's slush fund, who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That's who I mean. And if that's editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it's OK to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence.One reason I'm in hot water (with the Bush-appointees at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) is because my colleagues and I at "Now" didn't play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if, instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news.
RANT, BILL MOYERS, RANT!... Hear me: An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda, is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions, and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, so that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too ...
In a speech Friday, President Vincente Fox praised the dedication of Mexicans working in the United States, saying they're willing to take jobs that "even blacks" won't do. US gummint officials and critics, black and white, have objected and called for an apology. Fox initially dismissed criticism, refusing even to try to clarify his statement.
Small wonder. Making fun of blacks isn't a cultural no-no in Mexico.
DRUDGE reports:
Blackface comedy, while demeaning to many Americans, is still considered funny South of the Border and many people hand out nicknames based on skin color, according to Mark Stevenson, writing for the Associated Press. Stevenson notes that the conservative opposition leadership has gone on record defending Fox, adding, "even Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, the archbishop of Mexico City, criticized U.S. immigration policy as ridiculous and defended Fox's comments, saying: "The declaration had nothing to do with racism. It is a reality in the United States that anyone can prove."
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PAT STANDS PAT (I've always thought Pat's "conservatives" are what the rest of us might call theocracists, anti-Semites, homophobes, pro-Lifers, and high-tariff protectionists ...)
Pat Buchanan speaks of American conservatism in the past tense.
The one-time White House aide, three-time presidential candidate, commentator and magazine publisher says:
"(The conservative movement) doesn't exist anymore as a unifying force, There are still a lot of people who are conservative, but the movement is now broken up, crumbled, dismantled."
Mr. Buchanan, a former adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, says conservatism "is at war with itself over foreign policy, over deficit hawks versus supply-siders ... (There are) "a lot of people who call themselves conservative but who, on many issues, I just don't consider as conservative. They are big-government people."
Mr. Buchanan questions that view. For one thing, he says, Mr. Nixon, who imposed wage and price controls on the nation and outraged conservatives with his historic opening to communist China in 1972, was not a conservative. Nor in his view is President Bush or today's Republican Party.
"I was a conservative in the Nixon White House, but there was no question that it was not a conservative White House. Nixon referred to conservatives as 'they.' He used to ask me, 'What do they want?' One time he said, 'Buchanan, you have to give the nuts 20 percent of what they want.'"
He was a Goldwater supporter in 1964, but Mr. Buchanan says the Arizona Republican was probably more of a libertarian than a traditional conservative. "But in 1964, he was a hard-core anti-communist, he was for downsizing big government, and on law and order, he was quite tough."
In (Buchanan's) 1992 speech to the Republican National Convention in Houston, he declared: "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself."
Today he says, "American culture has become toxic and poisonous. Take a look at what Hollywood produces today and what it produced in the 1950s. The alteration is dramatic. We say we won a great victory by defeating gay marriage in 11 state-ballot referenda in November, but I think in the long run, that will be seen as a victory in defense of a citadel that eventually fell. I can't say we won the cultural war, and it's more likely we lost it."
(At this point in the exchange, Pat Buchanan starts making sense - which is why if you ignore "Pitchfork Populist Pat", you may miss a lot:
Buchanan expresses resentment over the "imperialist" prescriptions of neoconservatives. "I don't think neoconservatives are conservative at all. I'm often asked what exactly is it that they want to conserve. They are Wilsonian interventionists abroad; they are big government at home. I consider myself an independent conservative who votes Republican -- except when I'm on the ballot."
... Although he supported Mr. Bush's re-election, he says the president "has abdicated his responsibility to defend America from a foreign invasion. We add half a million illegals to our population each year, most of whom come to work, some to commit crimes against American citizens ... I say, look, the kind of immigrants we want are people who want to come here and become part of the American family ... not just to work and then go back home ... Look, you're going to have 100 million people of Hispanic, primarily Mexican, descent in the American Southwest by the middle of this century, and I think you are in danger of losing the American Southwest, de facto. I think this country is risking coming apart, like other countries in the world, over issues of language, culture and ethnicity."
"The president is in trouble. He's on the defensive, because he is not going to get his guest-workers program. He's going to get a House that tries to impose upon him the obligation to do his duty and defend this country from the invasion from Mexico, which he has refused to do."
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What if I am caught with Drugs or Alcohol on this Weblog?
A.) DA REV ANSWERS:
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Don't smoke in bed . . .
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I was RAISED on thought balloons!!
